Tom Carper's power plant bill dies

A key moderate senator has scrapped plans to move a bipartisan bill this year that would curb harmful power plant emissions

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) has been working for months on a set of amendments to the Clean Air Act, with a tentative vote scheduled for next week.

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But Carper and lead Republican co-sponsor Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) decided late Friday to cancel the Environment and Public Works Committee vote after failing to reach agreement on several key issues.

"We have made remarkable progress, but we aren't ready to move forward with a markup of this legislation at this time," Carper said in a statement. "I remain hopeful that we will be able to enact legislation in the near future that will cut emissions of mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides that are extremely harmful to our health and environment.”

The Carper bill had 15 original co-sponsors, including Alexander, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine). But it got stuck behind other Democratic priorities, namely efforts to pass a much broader climate change measure that covered a larger swath of the U.S. economy.

Negotiations also broke down over just how far to push electric utilities to reduce their emissions while revamping a suite of existing Environmental Protection Agency regulations coming over the next two years. Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) was angling for more changes to the original bill to give power companies relief from the EPA rules, a key sticking point in the talks.

A Senate Democratic staffer familiar with the negotiations said Carper and Alexander opted to punt rather than hold a straight party-line vote. “We didn’t want to just shove this through the committee,” the staffer said.

"Everybody agreed” to punt on the markup, said Matt Dempsey, a spokesman for Environment Committee ranking member Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.). “Everyone came to the same realization that the clock was running out on the session. A lot of progress was made this year. But it'd be better to wait until next year to start fresh."

Dempsey added that Carper and Inhofe would be well suited to negotiate on the issue in 2011. "It demonstrated we could work together," he said. "It has a good chance of passing and everyone did come a long way in the process. This is a good example of how we can get things done. And hopefully it'd be a good start next year."

Carper is next in line to lead Democrats on the EPW Committee if Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) loses her reelection bid in November.